The Case for Alarmism
Ron Rosenbaum's follow-up to his previous article on Euro-anti-Semitism (mentioned below) is an excellent summary of the alarming signs coming from Europe these days. I'm still not sure that Le Pen's electoral "success" is all that significant; and the "guilt/blame the victim" explanation still seems weak to me. But it all adds up to an unsettling picture, with disturbing parallels to the last time Europe turned against the Jews. Perhaps some of these parallels are superficial or coincidental, but taken together they're hard to ignore.
Or rather, sustaining the pretense of ignoring them requires considerable skill and determination. As many have noted, it is astonishing how little mention there is of the Holocaust in all of the European Israel-bashing. It's the central historical event, the defining phenomenon in the relationship between Europe and its Jews. Indeed, many see it as the defining event of the twentieth century. Bill Quick puts it well:
The Holocaust is the 800 pound invisible gorilla in the middle of the room. Much as Europeans would like to pretend it doesn't exist, it is the heart and core to understanding modern Israel and its actions. That Europe can so easily "forget" what happened in the camps sixty years ago, or pretend that it has no relevance today, it both shameful and despicable. The answer to the question, I'm afraid, is that yes, Europe learned a lesson of the Holocaust - it's just not the one everybody thinks it is. It learned that many, many of the guilty can escape all responsibility for genocide.
Rosenbaum quotes from a piece by Rod Liddle on the flap over the now-notorious Oxford poet Tom "American Jews should be shot on sight" Paulin. I missed it the first time around, and it bears on the "British anti-Semitism vs. anti-Zionism" question I've been wrestling with recently:
the Paulin business shook me out of my Wasp-ish complacency. I'd been inclined to dismiss as paranoid repeated complaints from British Jews that there was a new mood of anti-semitism abroad: I was wrong.Paulin will undoubtedly claim that his remarks are not anti-semitic, but merely anti-Zionist. He may even believe that himself. So might the others, generally from the left, who, when cross-examined about their opposition to what they call Zionism, reveal a dark and visceral loathing of Jews.
There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism; and it's true that the old communist caricatures of big businessmen were almost identical to the Nazi depiction of the "filthy Jew", with his business suit, venal expression and relentless appropriation of other people's money. But the whole thing seemed too neat, too glib a theory, to be convincing.
But I can see the displaced anti-semitism at work in the catch-all, ill-defined term "anti-Zionism". And if you doubt it look at Paulin's words - not the stuff about the rights of Palestinians, which we might all agree with - but, quite simply, in this: "hatred" and "shot dead".